Entries in Martha Stewart
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Brian Killian/WireImage(NEW YORK) -- We should have known Martha Stewart wouldn’t take a glue-gun laced swipe sitting down.

The domestic doyenne, 70, broke her silence Tuesday on daughter Alexis Stewart’s claims in a tell-all book that, among other things, her mother kept no food in the house and that Alexis ”grew up with a glue-gun pointed at my head.”

Calling the book “hilarious” and “enlightening,” Martha took to her Hallmark Channel show Tuesday to address her daughter’s claims, first by acknowledging the media frenzy they have sparked.

“Well, there’s a real buzz in the air, can you hear it?” Martha asked in Tuesday’s broadcast of The Martha Stewart Show. “My BlackBerry is buzzing....The Internet is buzzing, and it’s all because of my daughter, Alexis. She’s at it again.”

Whateverland: Learning to Live Here, which Alexis, 46, co-wrote with her Whatever satellite radio co-host Jennifer Koppelman Hutt, is a comical guide for those who “hate how-to manuals.” It will be published Oct. 18.

The book is loaded with jabs at her famous mom’s parenting skills. Alexis lists a few of the indignities of a childhood spent living under the roof of a demanding perfectionist: Alexis always had to wrap her own presents and wasn’t allowed to trick-or-treat on Halloween.

Martha said on her show that she read the book “a month and a half ago” and found it “full of funny stories” and “fabulous” pictures. “It is hilarious [and] enlightening.

“It’s not an autobiography,” she explained. “It touches on everything: food, fashion, cleaning, organizing and me. It’s irreverent, and it’s lots of fun.”

To Alexis’ claim that there was never anything to eat in their home, Martha responds: “Yes, if you wanted to eat when she was growing up, you had to cook something. That was the whole idea.” And today, she said, Alexis “is a superb cook.”

And about Alexis’ now-infamous quote that she grew up “with a glue-gun pointed at my head”?

Martha repeated an answer she said Alexis gave to Us Weekly: “Obviously, what I say in this book is an exaggeration of the truth. I’m not sure if there were glue guns when I was a kid.”

Always one with the last word, and always a smart entrepreneur, Martha ended her comments with a plug, for both herself and her daughter’s new book.

“I must have instilled in her some good habits. She’s tall, beautiful, gorgeous and mother of baby Jude, and that’s all that counts,” she says. “The book is out late October, wherever books are sold. I encourage you to buy it, read and make it a bestseller.”

Brian Killian/WireImage(NEW YORK) -- Alexis Stewart, the "salty" daughter of homemaking goddess Martha Stewart, in a new book writes that her mother strived for television perfection but was not a perfect parent.

"If I didn't do something perfectly, I had to do it again," writes Stewart, 46. "I grew up with a glue gun pointed at my head."

"Martha does everything better. You can't win!" she writes in Whateverland: Learning to Live Here, a comical guide for those who "hate how-to manuals," slated for bookstore shelves Oct. 18.

The sassy daughter lambasts her busy mother for everything from not having much food in the refrigerator to bringing home lederhosen from Switzerland: "You want me to be stoned to death at school?" her daughter writes.

Alexis Stewart also writes that despite her mother's public image, she was a humbug at holiday time, making Alexis wrap her own presents. And at Halloween, there was no trick or treating.

Both Martha and Alexis Stewart were not available to comment on the book, according to their respective publicists.

Martha Stewart, 70, has a reputation as being a "control freak" and making her employees cry, according to Forbes, which lists her net worth at $638 million. The media empire tied to her superhostess persona includes publishing, broadcasting and merchandising.

In 2004, Stewart was charged with four counts of obstructing justice and lying to investigators about a well-timed stock sale, but never missed a beat of popularity on her various cooking and decorating shows.

She had a tempestuous relationship with her daughter, but they got closer during her mother's time in a Virginia federal prison, according to press reports. In 2005, mother and daughter worked together on television's Apprentice, and Alexis Stewart has advanced her own career through Martha Stewart Omnimedia.

Martha Stewart's culinary capability was apparently a television creation, according to her daughter.

"There was never anything to eat at my house," writes Alexis Stewart. "Other people had food. I had no food....There were ingredients but no prepared food of any kind."

Alexis "Lexie" Stewart is the only child of Martha and Andrew Stewart and was raised in New York City. She was the co-host of satellite radio show Whatever With Alexis and Jennifer with her book co-author Jennifer Koppelman Hutt, the daughter of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia executive Charles Koppelman. Their topics ranged from pop culture to parodies of Martha Stewart's homemaking in a mock show called Whatever, Martha. This year, the duo took their radio show to the Hallmark Channel. Some online critics have called Alexis Stewart a "gutter mouth" who "drops the F bomb" in the blog she wrote for the channel until last June.

She also says she took the opposite advice of her mother's when choosing a man and didn't seek out someone with money.

"A woman lived near us when I was little, had married someone very wealthy and very unattractive, and my mother actually told me when I was a small child, 'Now Alexis, if this ever happens, you make sure you have sex with somebody else to have their baby. Don't have his baby,'" she writes.

Now divorced from her husband, New York lawyer John R. Cuti, Alexis Stewart writes that her mother was "very practical about it. It was a survival skill -- you have someone rich and ugly who takes care of you, and you have someone who's hot and makes attractive babies."

Martha Stewart was one of six children, her daughter notes, and her family struggled economically. Her daughter also claims her mother was a chronic hoarder.

One highly personal anecdote was particularly venomous. Alexis Stewart charged that her mother embarrassed her in front of friends by routinely leaving the bathroom door ajar.

"Mother always peed with the door open," she writes. "I remember saying, 'You know, now I have friends over! You can't do that anymore! It's gotta stop! My friends' parents don't do it! Give me a break here! I don't feel like being embarrassed! It's exhausting! I'm a kid! Stop!"'

Even the dog apparently let loose in the house, according to her daughter.

"My mother has a sign on all of her doors to take your shoes off," writes Alexis Stewart. "For god's sake! My mother's dogs p*** and s*** on her rugs and she's telling people to take their shoes off?"

Stuart Fischoff, a media psychologist from Carbondale, Ill., who has an expertise in celebrity behavior, said children of high-profile mothers seldom make up the "Mommy Dearest" stories.

"My guess is that you really have someone as a mother who made the life of the daughter difficult," he said. "It's rare to write a book about your parents just to make money."

"We know about the perfectionism of Martha Stewart and her drive," he said. The bathroom anecdote "flies in the face of what we have come to believe about Martha Stewart. It leads you to believe there's a lot to Martha Stewart we don't know about."

"Generally, celebrity kids hang out with other celebrity kids because they are the only ones with empathy about what's going on," said Fischoff. "For a child to struggle with the embarrassment and pressure of being a celebrity child, suggests lines have not been carefully drawn."

Fischoff suggests the celebrity mother may have "thrown the child under the bus."

Alexis Stewart does admit her mother had a "very hands-off approach to child rearing."

Still, the mother-daughter bonds seem to be intact, and she is quick to defend family against other critics. "I am, like, fisticuffs, you know, I'm ready," she writes.

The book, is, afterall, dedicated to Martha Stewart, with this foreword: "Thanks in advance to my mother for not getting angry about anything written in this book."

Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for Digitas(NEW YORK) -- Martha Stewart is 32 years older than Saturday Night Live star Seth Meyers, but that age difference reportedly hasn’t stopped the domestic diva from making Meyers the new man in her life.

A source close to the 69-year-old Stewart tells the National Enquirer Meyers has been on Stewart’s show four times and they’ve “grown to like each other a lot.” The source says Stewart “definitely has a crush on Seth,” and it couldn’t come at a better time in her life.

The report says her company, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, just posted a first quarter loss of $7.1 million, and her ex-boyfriend, 62-year-old Microsoft billionaire Charles Simonyi, recently had a baby with his new 30-year-old wife.﻿

Photo Courtesy - Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for Digitas(NEW YORK) -- Martha Stewart's dog gave her a not-so-lovely parting gift after the TV host tried to say goodbye to the French bulldog.

According to TMZ.com, Stewart says she was on the receiving end of a head butt from her dog, Francesca, after she leaned over to say goodbye to the sleeping pooch. The impact split her lip and drew blood, a wound that needed nine stitches to close.